Toyota endures humbling debut
McClatchy Newspapers motorsports writers David Poole and Jim Utter (Charlotte Observer), Sarah Rothschild (Miami Herald), John Sturbin (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) and Jim Pedley (Kansas City Star) voted to select the year's 12 biggest stories in NASCAR. That's Racin's review of those stories continues this week with stories eight through five:
8. Wonder Dad
When he emerged as a young NASCAR superstar, Jeff Gordon was given the nickname "Wonder Boy." It wasn't meant totally as a compliment, but he has sustained his early success with four Cup titles.Jeff Gordon did not win the 2007 Cup championship; teammate Jimmie Johnson did. But there's little argument Jeff Gordon had one of the best seasons of his career and one of the best anybody has had in the sport's modern era.
He scored consecutive victories at Phoenix and Talladega, Ala. -- his 76th and 77th -- to tie, then move past the late Dale Earnhardt on the sport's all-time win list. Jeff Gordon later won at Darlington, S.C. and Pocono (Pa.) in the regular season, then scored consecutive wins at Talladega and Charlotte during the Chase to take a lead that seemed sizeable until Johnson won four of the final five races.
Jeff Gordon's average finish of 5.1 in the Chase would have been more than enough to win during most years. He scored the second-most points anyone ever has in the Chase, 1,606, except for Johnson, who beat Jeff Gordon by 77 points.
Still, Jeff Gordon set a modern-era record with 30 top-10 finishes and is sixth on the all-time victory list. He has won at least two races for 14 consecutive years, and his average is a little more than five wins per year. If he could win five in '08, he would move to third on the all-time list, passing Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison, to trail only Richard Petty and David Pearson.
Despite all of that, the highlight of Jeff Gordon's year came with the birth of his first child, daughter Ella Sofia.
7. A giant falls
In a year marked by sadness with the passing of several respected and beloved motorsports figures, the death of former NASCAR president and chairman William France Jr. marked the end of an era in stock-car racing.
France, known as Bill Jr., followed his father onto the top rung of the NASCAR ladder in 1972. While "Big Bill" France helped organize NASCAR and laid the foundation for its eventual growth, it was his son who was at the helm when stock-car racing expanded from a regional curiosity to a national phenomenon.
The sport began its television era and moved from bullrings at county fairgrounds to some of the largest sports stadiums in America under Bill Jr.'s watch. He had his father's tenacity and his single-minded determination to keep the sport growing, and he also had a boundless sense of ambition for just how big it might become.
France's health had been slipping for several years, and he had turned the day-to-day reins of the sport over to his son, Brian. But as long as Bill Jr. was around, his influence over the sport was undeniable.
• Former Cup champion and longtime broadcaster Benny Parsons and Truck Series champion Bobby Hamilton died in January. Dr. Bruce Kennedy, the husband of Lesa France Kennedy, was killed in a plane crash in July.
6. Not exactly a running start
Toyota entered Cup competition without luring established, top-tier teams away from other manufacturers, so Bill Davis Racing and two brand-new operations -- Team Red Bull and Michael Waltrip Racing -- helped bring the first foreign-based company into full-time competition in stock-car racing's top series.Things went haywire from the first day of competition for a points-paying event as Michael Waltrip's car failed prequalifying inspection at the Daytona 500. A "foreign substance" was found inside the car's intake manifold, and NASCAR impounded the car and expelled two members of Waltrip's team for their role in the infraction.
With Toyota's new teams fighting uphill against NASCAR's rule guaranteeing starting spots to those in the top 35 in car owner standings, qualifying day became the biggest day of the week for the Camry crews.
None of the teams made every race in 2007, with Dave Blaney coming closest by qualifying for 33 of 36.
Blaney and Waltrip each won a pole, and Blaney's third-place finish at Talladega was Toyota's best of the season. Blaney also finished 34th in the owner standings, meaning he'll have a spot in the starting lineup for the first five races of 2008.
With those first-year growing pains out of the way, however, how much better will Toyota's second Cup season be? That figures to depend largely on how well Joe Gibbs Racing fares in its transition to the manufacturer.
The Gibbs team, which has won 58 races in its 16 seasons of competition, will send star drivers Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and new team member Kyle Busch onto the track this year trying to get Toyota its first taste of NASCAR victory.
5. Luster dims
Is NASCAR's growth boom running out of fuel? TV ratings were off about 10 percent for the 2007 season and a little more than 20 percent from two seasons ago. Tickets went unsold, sometimes in large numbers, at some Cup races.
More importantly, perhaps, the same national media that made NASCAR their darling in the previous decade as the sport expanded its base from regional to national began to take a sometimes critical look at stock-car racing. Words such as "stagnant" began to creep into stories about how NASCAR is doing, and that's not something the sport's top brass likes to hear.
NASCAR chairman Brian France spoke to the media on the day of the season's final race and said, basically, that all is well. Behind that public stance, however, the people running the sport and the business of the sport understand that even if the perception of the problem is greater than the problem itself, that perception could be a problem going forward.
Next week, Nos. 4 through 1
Last week's list
Stories nine through 12 on the list of the top NASCAR stories of 2007:
9. NASCAR's rules officials' judgment and integrity questioned.
10. Juan Pablo Montoya makes the move to NASCAR and is named Nextel Cup rookie of the year.
11. Beginning with a wild finish in the Daytona 500, the Nextel Cup Series sees four races determined by last-lap passes.
12. Bruton Smith reshapes his Las Vegas and Bristol tracks, buys track in New Hampshire and decides to leave Lowe's Motor Speedway where it is.
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